I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Friday, April 4, 2014

Months redux

Read close and you may learn some things about the game you'll be playing this summer. Obviously, not everything we wrote made the final cut -- we didn't want to pre-announce features. That's CCP's job. Still, you might be able to find some hints.

Thanks again to CCP Logibro for a lot of the initial note-taking, Mike Azariah and Trebor Daehdoow for transcription and first writing passes, several CSM8 members that assisted with even more writing (this CSM8 weekly update has the details), and Ali Aras for handling the bulk of the back-and-forth editing work that went with getting this thing cleared with CCP!

Content is seems to be on the back burner until they finish the new tools for it.

If the minutes are trustworthy then they might have an internal version by late summer, so don't expect the finished tools till winter at the earliest. Then they have to actually use them so actual new in space content is more than a year away summer 2015 if we are lucky.

More likely 2016-17, considering how nul sec centric the session minutes are I'd expect sov revamps before a serious content expansion. Even that is making the assumption that future content will have reasonable accessibility rather than being aimed at coalition sized entities.

So, just fyi and stuff jester: This is extremely disappointing that CCP has apparently ceased any actual content creation. Right now, both of my accounts are paid for by plex. Currently, basically any other mmo ever is more attractive than EVE. EVE is stale as hell and has been stagnant for some time now. Touting things such as deployables and ghost sites as features does not work.

The fact that nullsec has yet again hijacked proceedings is a little bit frustrating. I don't actually think it accomplishes anything to redo sov for the nth time.

Yet, while they sit with their thumbs up their asses, stuff that actually needs attention is being sidelined.

You'll be understanding when I say I'm more than a little annoyed at CCP and am not very pleased with the current state of affairs.

They're TALKING about redoing sov for the nth time. They have not really done jack to it for almost 5 years. Predicted highlight of CSM9 summer session coming up later this year: "CCP asks the CSM for ideas on how to improve sov." That will be for the n+1th time.

What was pretty interesting is to read CCP Seagull was/is on maternity leave. Nice of CCP to leave their game and its loyal playerbase hanging while the former EA dude from marketing figures out how to do damage control for 6 months awaiting her return.

Don't get me wrong, congrats to Seagull and her family, but FFS GET BACK TO WORK BEFORE WE ALL DIE OF BOREDOM

Frankly, those minutes make a extremely poor selling tool for the Recall Program. On the other hand, if CCP Dolan's plan was to make sure nobody would get too excited over the minutes, he really hit the nail...

"Come back, pal! Read the CSM minutes and see yourself how nothing new or exciting is coming our way for the third year in a row!"

Are ,you serious? FORCE a change that can ONLY help new players survive and grow in EvE is somehow a BAD thing in your eyes?? How so?

Do you seriously prefer to fit your ships in such a way that any PvP fit ganker can KILL you because you don't have a comparable fit? I lost a 'cane years ago to a faction frig because I was PvE fit... no web or scram and Lrg guns because that's what the site called for...He orbited me, scrammed and webbed me and simply wore my passive armor tank down... my death was a foregone conclusion because I COULD NOT EFFECTIVELY FIGHT BACK against a PvP fit.

One of the reasons I prefer to fly and live in W-space is because the Sleeper AI (1) fits an Omni-Tank, (2) puts out Omni-DPS, (3) uses web & scram and (4) is 'good' enough that PvP fits are not only acceptable, but are the 'proper' PvE fit when running Sleeper sites... due to this we are viable in a PvP fight if/when we get hotdropped...

CCP changing the mission and sites AI to require PvPfits will do more for the viability and retention of new players in this game than any other single change they could make. Period.

If you are agiandt this change then it is because you are the kinda of asshat who can ONLY enjoy a one sided fight... afraid of a little real competition huh?

Houm... maybe some players enjoy PvE content and would rather see it evolve for the better rather than just become a clone of PvP content?

As in: how many players run sleeper sites vs how many players run missions/incursions? Or, how many players perform PvE in high security space vs how many players perform PvE in low/null/WH?

Telling players that they're playing the game wrong and then shove the right way on them is a good way to lose customers. And I doubt that a game so desperate for subscriptions that it's asking its customers to bring back their friends, is in shape to kick the nuts of tens of thousands of players.

If it's done right it will be amazing for the game, not necessarily players wallet blink totals.

What will be amazing is having zero divide between the PvE Eve players and the PvP Eve players, while PvP pilots can PvE it's not true currently that PvE players know how to PvP. This can be a mindset issue founded at the start of the new players experience and who they first met and how they were introduced to PvP.

Anything that CCP can do to bridge that gap will be for the better short, medium and long term future of Eve Online.

If CCP wants an extra challenge they could bridge the gap between the pvp and industrial minded players of Eve, but I think that might be a bridge too far. I will remain in hope however.

If they can somehow make mining more interactive and interesting it will be a great thing for the engagement of players of all types.

Well, guess what? People ARE going away. And CCP's marketing guys are increasingly desperate. What's their last one? Recalling former players through their friends who still play the game? That's pathetic.

PVP in EVE is as boring as grinding asteroids. There is no skill involved. You don't even need to figure out your own fit - just use the one that devs like Fozzie and Rise have pre-determined is the only right fit for that particular ship.

Fleet vs fleet or gang vs gang is even more pathetic. Everyone target primary - press F1. If you are the primary, you die - nothing you can do about it. Biggest blob wins. Yawn. And. let's not forget the added insult of TiDi.

Or, let's go gank a miner or hauler. Yeah, big challenge.

I spent 3 months in low and null PVP, before I got bored with it; and six years doing PVE, industry, market trading, and other non-PVP activities.

I do not know if it is apathy on my part in general, I devoured the contents of previous minutes but on this I really cba to wade through it all. What if anything new is mentioned, if it has all been redacted no point in reading it for a heads up and I will find out when everyone else does when they announce it. Not saying if this is better or worse, just different. My Eve interest is beginning to wane anyway sadly :/ Someone do a TLDR other than the glib ones currently going around t'internet.

You missed nothing. Even the drones part was NDA redacted even though we were informed of those changes last week. LOL-worthy in every respect. No wonder they didn't want to rush the minutes out the door.

It showed what its main purpose was. That is, it showed which CSM members were active and in what ways/sections they were active, in order for you to see who was representing your interests. It was also an insight into how the CSM process actually works, rather than rumor or speculation.

It is NOT meant to announce, elaborate on or otherwise talk about upcoming features or changes to the game. Any such hints are simply a bi-product of the interaction between CCP and CSM.

Dev blogs and dev posts, as well as the new twitch stream format CCP has started using, is the place you should look for "new info on stuff".

And it took how many months to get this rather disappointing set of notes made public?

We do full-day meeting reports like this *every* week at our company, and it only requires 1-2 days, by even the least competent entry-level assistant, working at it in addition to his/her other tasks.

Pathetic. And we wonder why CCP can't get anything more substantial done? Maybe CCP should start by addressing their obvious HR problem and actually hire some qualified staff, instead of people whose only "skill/experience" is that they used to play the game (badly).

CCP has acknowledged that you're obviously more capable than a 17+ year old company of 600+ employees involved the in development of 5+ titles and one of the steadiest continued growth's of an MMO over a 10+ year period and are handing over the keys to you. You're clearly more capable at this than they are and we hope nothing but the best for you! Make us proud! The internet is impressed by you!

Anon 1:10 - I guess you are too stupid to notice that the 600 employee number in the Wikipedia article comes from the 2008 annual report? But, you probably don't know about footnote links, do you? You were also unable to read about the 2011 layoffs, it seems.

What an idiot - you can't even read your own reference.

And, "in development" refers to active projects/products - not ones which are no longer being worked on, nor sold, nor purely speculative concepts.

CCP has 3 products in development - EVE, Dust and Valkyrie. Not 5+.

So, "bro", it is apparently ok for me to call you stupid, since you are indeed the stupid one.

Hate to agree with Anon1101, but, unfortunately, he is right. The inability to push out something as trivial as these CSM minutes expeditiously speaks poorly for CCP's project management ability and staff.

And, I don't see much in these minutes that would justify the number of employees that CCP supposedly does have working on EVE - whether it is 600+ or 554. CCP used to roll out *real* expansions with s**tloads of new content, with 1/4 of its current staff.

It is easy to say that the good stuff is all NDA, and I'll be pleasantly surprised if something amazing comes out this summer, but the past several expansions have been underwhelming, to say the least - and not worthy of being called "expansions". Bug fixes and database tweaks, and a couple of new shaders. Whee.

Let's face it - after Incarna, CCP lost it's mojo. A game company has to be willing to take risks with its existing player base, in order to "wow" the next generation of players and CCP can't do that anymore. CCP cut off its own balls by caving in to the players' unsub threats, in response to rumors of gold ammo and space barbies, replacing the spaceship game.

So, now we get minor tweaks to the game, because of CCP fears of losing what remains of their player base and wrings their hands over the fact that they can't attract any new players.

Oh, hey, I know! Since CCP cannot attract new players, let's try to get back the players who unsubbed instead! Brilliant!

Except for the fact that the issues which caused those players to unsub have never been fixed.... lol.

No focus groups won't work if the devs and CCP wants to keep their vision of a harsh world where everything (in game) goes.

CCP should instead introduce real players to the real harshness of the game and further teach them the questions to be asking themselves and others - such as, why should I join your corp? Answer shouldn't be because we [mine]/[PvE] as a corp for 23/7, alas that's what most new players experience actually is because of the mindset that their lack of skill points is equal to lack of skill.

CCP could improve the default overview settings for a start and that would be a great quality of life improvement.

@Daniel - "No focus groups won't work if the devs and CCP wants to keep their vision of a harsh world where everything (in game) goes."

That is *exactly* the point of focus groups - to find out if CCP should keep the "EVE is harsh" nonsense or not. If it is just driving away new players (which it is), then the concept is fundamentally flawed (which it is).

And, you don't "introduce" new players to harshness, by blowing up or scamming all of their assets in the first week. This sort of stupid suggestion has been floating around for the past several years and yet no one has managed to make it work. Hell, you might as well suggest that CCP move all of the starter systems to null - and let's see how that works out for new player subs.

Or, how about CCP resets everyone to zero - SP, assets, ISK, corps, alliances - and gets rid of high sec completely? Let's see how many of the "harsh" players of EVE are still playing one month after the reset.

I like Anon136's idea of resetting players to zero, but I think it should just be the CSM members who get reset to zero. Perhaps, this will give them a better idea of how the game works, or not, for new players. On the other hand, I'd bet real money that the CSM members would just quit playing, because the game would be too hard for them, as new players...lol.

Don't forget to brainwash them so they forget everything they know about playing EVE. People who know how to play the game have been known for feats like the "billion race" or, in how few gameplay hours can they earn a billion on a trial account.

@ Anon 6:43 - Good point. Guess it would only be fair to subject them to a 99.999% tax, and allow them to join only corps of 10 or less players, which do not belong to an alliance, in order to improve their noob player experience.

@Anon1239 That is what I did, after my friends' corp got wardecced and griefed to stop playing. My friends quit and preferred to go play WoT instead of Eve Online.

Note - we petitioned the GMs, but they said it was ok for a big null-alliance corp to camp our systems 24/7 and kill us whenever we tried to play. And, don't try to say that you can fight back against bigger opponent, because it is not true. That is why I like being in the Goons.

I wish I could say these minutes were worth waiting for. I read them. Somwhat closely. What I'm getting is that there will not actually be a summer "expansion" at all.

Jester, you said a few weeks ago you were waiting for CCP to make some sort of announcement about something or other. Have they made it yet? The things that come out of Rek from CCP as news and/or announcements have been so underwhelming lately it's hard to tell.

Just read the Science and Industry entry. WTF? Talking about the largest change in the game in the 5 years I've been playing and everyone blows it off? Have they at all analyzed the effect of previous loot nerfs?

My major sources of ISK are intra-region trading and manufacturing. When they eliminated meta0 drops my trading income dropped by more then 80%. Eventually got it back up to half what I made pre-nerf by training up Tycoon to 5 on one character and 4 on another. Takes about 4-5 times as long to go through market orders.

I balanced the income loss by dropping 2 of my 4 accounts.

The effect on manufacturing was worse. I used to build T1 ships in several systems in hi-sec adjacent to either low- or null-sec. Local market orders for modules and drone compounds were sufficient to keep up with the local demand (primarily frigates and destroyers). After the nerf it became impossible to continue. Now I just use factories near Jita and Rens. Bleh.

I laughed when I read the CCP take on mission runners. I've talked to dozens of mission runners over the years. How many primarily blitzed missions? Zero.

Unless there is some compelling content in the next release, I think this is going to make Incarna seem like a major success.

Most people don't know that the meta module price is pretty much tied to the recycling value, due to market glut from NPC drops - and think they are going to be able to continue to sell the modules at the current prices.

There is going to be a lot of post-patch screaming, when those prices drop by 50%, but, ofc, it will be done and too late.

"I laughed when I read the CCP take on mission runners. I've talked to dozens of mission runners over the years. How many primarily blitzed missions? Zero."

Many missions are run by people who are not mission runners. People who are not mission runners actually blitz the missions so they can go back to whatever they're financing with that grind ASAP. Yet true mission runners -people whose main trade in the game is to run missions- rarely blitz as that's inefficent and they actually enjoy running missions (to a point).

So CCP may be right on one account: maybe most missions are blitzed. But also they are ohmyfuckingshit clueless as usual about WHO blitzs missions: people who doesn't pays CCP money because of the missions.

So, who should get CCP's attention? People who blitz missions or actual mission runners?

There's no question at all, as there are no true mission runners at the CSM but certainly there are some "blitzers" in it.

And this is how you end up with some clueless retard wishing to remove PvE fits and force mission runners to use PvP fits...

I don't understand "blitzing" missions. Can someone please explain? I've been running level 2 missions and recently trying level 3 missions, with friends. The level 2 missions do not pay much and most of our income comes from the modules, ammo and other stuff we find in the wrecks, and the salvage parts. We usually recycle the modules into minerals, then sell, because one of the older players told us to do it this way. Will we make more income from "blitzing"?

What a poor piece of words. Most I can read is "NDA". Sometimes I think, the only thing the CSM is good for, is to hear the "amazing" upcoming features from CCP (if there were some...) and then tell the other players: "Haha! I know something you don´t! Haha!".

They're still figuring how to announce that they derecognized Dust 514's 21 million dollars development cost as a total loss and essentially can't find no excuses to keep throwing money into that money pit.

OH GOOD! CCP told you, but no one else exactly what that 21 million involved because you're more important than everyone else in the world and kept it from us for shits and giggles. Can you also tell me who's going to win the next 3 Super Bowls and tomorrow's lottery #'s? :D

You should read this blog more often. Jester claimed that the CSM know what are about those 21 million yet also said it was NDA. Then he linked to an old blog entry which talked about how CCP had capitalized the development costs for DUST 514.

"Ytterbium opened the session by going over general changes CCP intends to make in the summer. These include refining skill changes so you need less of the specialized refining skills"...which is precisely the opposite of what we got.

I would love to hear a CSM member explain how this thing got completely reversed. And people say that CSM does not direct game design...right. The null sec RMT cartels know better.

Why are you CSM guys not putting a stop to skill changes which put the younger players even further behind the older players?

Now, we have to train two skills, instead of one, to get light and medium drones? And, to keep our mining income, we have to train up the refinery skills to 5, as well as fit a 4% implant?

Adding insult to injury, the older players don't even need to train up the new drone skills - they get them for free? WTF?

The racial BC skill changes have already put me and many of my newer corp mates way behind in skill training, and this sort of nonsense just keeps making things worse. No way to get to an even playing field of younger vs older players, if CCP is going to keep this up.

The last few expansions (including what little is known about the next one) seem to be all tiny little steps. It's hard to see them leading us to the grand vision of space colonization that CCP Seagull described.

I'm worried that the first player built stargate will lead to what will be known as 'meh'-space (m-space), as I'm not convinced CCP will meet player expectations.

Provided how the only way to enjoy that content will be to belong to an alliance able to defend the gates against the Goons, the real struggle will be convincing 80% of the players that there's something for them in new space, specially as it's the only new thing coming to the game until 2016.

This game never had a stated development goal, but whatever it was, it totally lost its way in 2011.

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